


Recompense

by House of Halation (glasshibou)



Category: Shall We Date?: Obey Me!
Genre: #justdemonthings, AU, Arranged Marriage, F/M, Minor Character Death, Revenge, conquering a kingdom via mental warfare, if you squint really hard there are some canon references in here, mentions of violence but nothing graphic, reader has the heart of a warrior queen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-18
Updated: 2020-08-18
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:14:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25961158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glasshibou/pseuds/House%20of%20Halation
Summary: And so, you sleep and dream of shifting stars, ink-black horns and dusky purple eyes.---For a Tumblr anon, who requested:A princess is about to be married off for the good of the realm (even though she might not be thrilled about being sold off like cattle, she doesn't have a choice). Except that Belphegor, for chaos' sake (just to fuck with humans) decides to snatch her away (maybe using dream manipulation/sleepwalking trance).
Relationships: Belphegor (Shall We Date?: Obey Me!)/Original Female Character(s), Belphegor (Shall We Date?: Obey Me!)/Reader
Comments: 6
Kudos: 101





	Recompense

The moon is a wide and unblinking eye above the common road, lighting up the well-worn path as soldiers march along beside the carriage. They have been moving almost constantly for three days now, taking breaks only long enough to feed and water their horses and sleep in shifts. You have not been allowed out of the carriage for almost that long, save for short breaks to stretch your legs or relieve yourself. The swaying of the coach has become your entire world, accompanied by clopping hooves and the metallic creak of leather against armor. 

You have four more days of this hell before you enter another. 

The supplies cart behind you carries your trousseau, full of fine goods to make your new life more bearable to all involved save you; your new husband will not have to pay for silks for fine dresses and the gold you bring with you is a promise that your new union will bring riches. Of course, the man you are pledged to does not  _ need _ the treasures, he and his treasury are no doubt already glutted with the spoils of his wars. Your country is just another to be added to his crown. 

At least with your sacrifice, it can be done bloodlessly. So you are trussed up in fine traveling clothes and jewels and rich spices, a cow to slaughter to save your kingdom from the same fate suffered by those around you. It could be worse, perhaps. You know little about your husband-to-be save that he is a brilliant tactician and merciless in his pursuits; there are rumors that he fought against a demon once, or that maybe he has an army of them under his control. That would, at least, explain his unrelenting military victories. 

He takes what he wants, your ladies in waiting told you as they brushed your hair and pulled it into tight traveling braids before you departed. Luck was not on your side when he set his eyes on you so many months ago, just after your  _ first _ engagement was announced. He’d sacked that kingdom, took it for his own and found in the flames and splinters of the foreign noble house your portrait. That engagement ended—it’s hard to maintain one when the bridegroom is dead—and another one quickly forged. You could have pretended to be upset over the sudden change in the ownership of your hand, you could perhaps have demanded the proper time for mourning, to allow yourself time to grieve. 

But the king’s proposal (demand; you were not allowed to read the letter but you heard rumors that made your blood run cold and sluggish through your heart) was accompanied by the head belonging to a minor noble in your court. His lands had the great misfortune of bordering the fallen kingdom, and the implication was clear.

Your father, the king, could give your hand to this beast or lose everything to his armies.

It was an easy choice to make, of course, and you suppose you cannot fault him. Your king has been looking more and more haggard of late, sleepless nights spent agonizing over military supply chains and logistics and whether or not a new battle ship should be commissioned. In his place you might have done something similar if it guaranteed that your people made it through the winter unscathed. 

But it doesn’t mean that you have to  _ like  _ it, that you have to smile at the prospect of marrying someone so stained with blood. You hope that it will not be a spectacle, that you can say your vows and then retire for the evening and if you are  _ very _ lucky, the consummation night will be the only time you have to see him. He is a busy man, after all, with all of his warring. You’ve already made your prayers to your gods; you can only hope that they are listening. His first wife (you pointedly refuse to acknowledge the rumors that swirl about her and her untimely death) never bore him any children. Perhaps he will leave you alone. 

That hope is what you cling to as you settle into the overstuffed seat that has become your bed for the duration of the travel and listen to horseshoes kick against the little stones that litter the path. It’s almost impossible to get comfortable in the cramped space and your neck, you think, might have a permanent kink in it—but despite all of that, sleep comes easily. If you had the capacity to worry about much more it might strike you as concerning. 

At least the dreams are a welcome escape; hours pass in what feels like the blink of an eye, each sunrise a revelation that your duty is drawing nearer. It should be more concerning, you know, but you are unable to summon much beyond disgust and apathy towards the fate waiting for you. 

And so, you sleep and dream of shifting stars, ink-black horns and dusky purple eyes. 

You wake to the intrusion of knocking on the reinforced panel right beside your head, torn from your slumber like a babe from the womb. For the first few panicked moments you do not know where you are or why you are in such a small space, and your heart beats a frantic pattern against your ribs.

“Your Royal Highness,” you hear one of your guards say as he taps against the carriage door. “We have crossed the border; a messenger is here to ensure that you are well.” You close your eyes in resignation. The messenger will take news of your arrival back to your fiance, to confirm that it is you and he has not been deceived and sent a milkmaid instead. As if you’d dare to resort to trickery. As if your father would  _ let _ you. 

“You will wait a moment,” you announce icily, loud enough for the messenger to hear. You do not announce that you look like a mess, that your gown is crumpled and your hair is loosening from the braids and the dark circles under your eyes are enough to scare away even a hobgoblin. Instead, you throw a shawl over your head and pull it tight around yourself. The signet ring on your hand will have to do; you doubt that someone as lowly as a messenger will actually know what you look like. 

Not being able to put it off any longer, you allow the carriage door to be opened as you step out into the weak sunlight, your legs achy from disuse. It’s good to stand fully at least.

To your surprise there is not just one messenger but two, both waiting expectantly for your appearance. The first glances at your face and then looks away with appropriate deference, gazing upon you just long enough to confirm that you are likely to be who you claim to be. The other one… You eye him up and find that if you do not want to make uncomfortable eye contact, you will have to look away first.  _ Impudent. _ But something of a welcome change, at least; none of your guardsmen speak to you, and so now something as paltry as eye contact is strangely comforting. 

Recognition smolders in the back of your mind because there’s something almost…  _ familiar _ about his eyes and the way they glimer under his dark hair. For a moment you are reminded of sunsets, of quiet moments as the sun slips below the horizon. But as you tear your eyes from his you remind yourself that that can’t be right, that mortal men do not have eyes the color of a sky on fire and your fiance is unlikely to have demigods or demons working as a simple messenger. 

“Are you satisfied?” This is taking entirely too long for your liking, and even if it hastens your impending nuptials, you would prefer to finally be able to sleep in a proper bed once more. 

“Immensely,” says the man who brazenly stared at you. His companion smiles nervously and you are surprised when none of your guards move forward to make the man step back. 

And then the encounter is over and you are safely ensconced back in your carriage; both of the messengers rush forward on their fleet horses to announce your impending arrival. If you are lucky your husband will let you rest for a day or two before the ceremony. Although you are not on horseback yourself, travel is still wearisome and all you want to do is sleep peacefully for a solid length of time. You’ve already breezed through the books you brought along, few that they were; there’s little else to do but to watch the scenery pass by through the little window.

The common road looks as it has for the past however many miles, you think, irritated. Perhaps that is by design; the idea behind it was to connect the realms, but all you see is the boring monotony of cobbled paths and trees and fields. As if by design, the only time you pass by settlements is when it’s dark out and you can see nothing but pinpricks of flames from candles and, in some of the larger towns, flame-fuelled street torches. You’ve begged your guards on more than one occasion to sleep in an inn—any inn will do; you’re far beyond requiring the most luxurious of accommodations—but they’ve refused you at each turn. 

It’s not difficult to discover that something is being kept from you, that there’s more than one reason your guard is so heavy.  _ Somebody _ expects trouble at some point along your route, but nobody has told you from which quarter it might come. It’s nothing that you’re surprised about, no matter how angry it makes you. You’ve always been kept from anything the least bit important in the court, locked out of all decisions with any real weight. Even to the point of your own marriage; both suitors were chosen for you, selected based on what they were willing to trade for your hand. Your first fiance would have provided coin and men to help defend your borders. The second offers little but his own word that he will not drag your kingdom into his unending wars, his end goals obscure and shifting like clouds ahead of a storm front. 

Cold comfort as you travel to his keep, where your guards will leave you to the tender mercies of your warmonger of a husband. 

Perhaps trouble is expected from distant relatives of your first fiance, coming to rescue you for reasons that escape your understanding. Perhaps it is someone from your own kingdom or your husband-to-be’s, protesting the union as you do. Maybe still it is a dashing rogue come to sweep you off your feet and you will live happily ever after.

You short and slam your book shut; fantasies and nighttime stories are all well and good for children, but you are soon to be a married woman and a queen besides. There will be no gallant insurrection, no last minute rescue from forces unknown. 

The sun sinks below the horizon and you are one day closer to the end of your journey.

* * *

You are sleeping, you are sure; the pain in your neck is not as ever-present as it has been since the second day of your travels and your movements feel languid, like you are moving through warm water. But your eyes are open and you recognize the inside of your temporary prison, the way your gown tangles around your legs. You’ve never dreamed of this before, never sought to rewrite the day within your own sleeping mind.

But if nothing else, it offers a temporary escape. The carriage is still and you hear the near roar of whatever insects live in the grassy fields nearby. When you reach out to test the door, you find that it is unlocked.

This, more than anything else, is what makes you certain that you are dreaming. Your guards—your  _ captors _ —would never leave you so unattended, lever let you exit your carriage unaccompanied. But that is what happens when you step out onto the ground, alone and unguarded and free for the first time in what feels like years. A pity, then, that it is only a dream. 

_ Come, _ you hear something whisper around you. The word reverberates and hangs in the air like honey, warm and sweet. You are powerless to resist, and why would you want to anyway? Perhaps there is a reason, but it escapes your muddled, sleepy mind. The path laid out for you takes you away from the carriage, away from your guards. They lay slumped on the ground and while some of them leak a dark liquid—it’s almost black in the dark and the silvery light from the moon—the knowledge barely enters your mind. Some are sleeping peacefully, as evidenced by the steady rise and fall of their chests. 

_ Come, now, _ you hear the words and heed them, stepping onto the new path laid out for you. It’s made of light, shimming purple prisms that somehow still support your weight and lead you away from the fallen semicircle of your countrymen. 

* * *

“Oh,” says an unfamiliar voice as you struggle into wakefulness. “You’re up. I was wondering if you would wake again.” The words strike you as uniquely bizarre and you struggle into a sitting position, the pillows you’re sprawled out over inelegantly shifting with your movements. There are a lot of questions you’d like to ask, most of them boiling down to a confused and afraid  _ what? _

Instead, you say “where am I?”

The room you’re in is dark, lit only by the tiny pinpricks of light that shine through the ceiling. You think it might be glass, that in the day the room will be lit by the golden light of the sun. But for now the stars seem so far away, little more than hints of light far out in the void. At the edge of your vision one of the shadows shifts, and you turn to try to see it; it melts into the others as you try to focus your vision, pulling one of the pillows towards yourself. It wouldn’t offer much in the way of protection, but it always grounds you to be able to hold something. 

“For the moment? My realm,” the voice says as easily as breathing. It doesn’t answer the unspoken questions you have, the ones you’re certain the speaker knows you mean to ask. Normally all you have to do is imply that you want something and someone makes sure it gets to you—as long as that something is largely pointless: a new scent oil, a new gown, a bronzed hand mirror or a new set of delicate golden pins to put in your hair. Not information or knowledge; the fact that this trend has crossed over to wherever you are now is galling. Sleep and confusion still clouds your mind and inflames your temper. 

“That is not what I was truly asking, and you know it,” you snap into the darkness. Too late to bring your words back now, even if you do regret them as they leave your lips.

“So ask what you really want,” the voice says carelessly, as if you haven’t just insulted it deeply. You try to focus on the tone and cadence, the quality of the voice to glean any sliver of information that you can. Male, you think. It likely belongs to a man. And he doesn’t sound angry at all, just impossibly bored. 

“Who are you?” You ask, leaning forwards into empty air as if that might help you see better. “Do you mean me any harm? I am to be married—”

“That isn’t happening,” the man dismisses. Even though you know it shouldn’t, you feel strangely comfortable with his words. Elated, even, to be escaping the bonds of matrimony foisted upon you. 

“Then you’ve saved me,” you say. From marriage, at least, if nothing else. It’s similar enough to comfort that your shoulders sag in relief, if only for a moment. If you are gone, then what of your kingdom? The king you were being sent to expects a bride, and when one does not show up… 

“Did I? That was incidental,” the man says. If you could see him, you would see that he’s waving one of his hands lazily. “I just really wanted to make that king angry.”

And ah, there it is. The departure of the strange solace you’d built up.

“But my kingdom—” you start before reminding yourself that this man does not actually care. If he spirited you away for the sole purpose of angering such a bloodthirsty monarch, then he is sure to lack any of the empathy you were about to try to appeal to. “What did he do?”

A change in tactics, then. 

You hear the shifting of cloth and then one of the shadows pulls itself from its brethren to move closer to you. 

“I can’t really say,” the shadowy man says. “I can’t quite remember.” The stars above you flicker and one draws closer with its cold light, illuminating both you and the man now sitting across from you. He has a chair for himself while you remain on the floor in the pile of cushions. Recognition sweeps through you as you take in his eyes, a deeper shade of purple than before, when he was wearing messenger garba nd standing underneath the sun. 

“You,” the word falls from your lips, but you do not allow yourself to shrink back. “You were a messenger—”

“I was  _ posing _ as a messenger,” he corrects, looking at you as if you really should have figured that out for yourself. You bite your tongue to keep a sharp retort back. “Don’t worry about the other one; he made it home safe and delivered his missive just fine.”

The king knows that you made it to his lands, then. Hopefully he will blame bandits or wild animals or anything else but your countrymen for your disappearance. Which is another thing you have to sort out; the man doesn’t seem dangerous, exactly, but you know he’s far from safe. 

“I wish to go back home,” you say, and the man spares you a glance out of the corner of his eyes. When he turns to look back up at the stars you take the opportunity to study him. Fine features, dark hair. He looks thin in his thick, heavy clothes—not like a threat at all. The only thing that stands out about him is his eyes, and the more you look at them the more you feel yourself pulled in. 

“You can do whatever you want as soon as that king’s life has crumbled apart around him,” the man says with a shrug. “Until then, I’m afraid you’ll have to stay here.” You puff out your cheeks with an irritated huff and stand, pacing around the edges of what you can see. There’s no telling how big the room is, not when the darkness eats up the edges. 

“You can’t tell me why you dislike him—which is fine, I am… not fond of him myself. But can you please explain to me what you hope to accomplish?” At your words the man seems to brighten somewhat.

“I thought he was to be your dearest husband,” the man says and you short. Nobody has ever talked to you like this before, with no care at all for your station. You wonder if this man is a king or a prince of some sort with how little he regards propriety. It’s… surprisingly easy to talk with him without feeling the need to tiptoe around propriety. 

“You should know. Arranged marriages are for duty, not…” you pause, thinking of some of your novels. “Not any sort of affection,” you finish. Your favorite stories are the tales of deep love, the ones that end happily and promise golden futures. Princess though may be, that was never the course set out for you. 

“Why should I know that?” He says, his direction back on you as he tilts his head. “If you think I’m some lowly human prince, then you are sorely mistaken.”

His words steal the breath from your lungs and your nervous pacing halts as you stare back at him. He pulls the starlight closer with a wicked grin and you see, for the first time, spiraling horns on each side of his head and a tufted tail swaying behind him. Not a human prince at all, like he said; your mind scrambles to put the pieces together, all of the little rumors and whispers that you’d managed to collect about your new fiance.

“Demon,” you whisper, your knees weakening. But you cannot allow yourself to faint, refuse to show any weakness to the being in front of you. Because the rumors tell you that they prey on weakness, and you will not allow yourself to become a meal. And then a more insidious voice slithers through your mind, the one that tells you that perhaps it was not your fiance hunting the demons, but that the demons were hunting your fiance.

“Mmm,” the demon hums, smirking as you try to maintain control over your facial expression. He remains sitting, which is good. You allow yourself to creep closer to him step by step—but not too close, not within reaching distance. The more level-headed part of you reminds you that if he wanted you dead he would have done it already. “He thought that he could harness my power,” the demon continues as he studies you. “He was wrong, of course. Stupid man thinks I’m hiding out in your world, and now that I own a piece of his soul he’s been searching for me to get it back.”

You feel the blood drain from your face. All of the wars, the relentless bloodshed—all of it could be traced back to this demon? But, no, you remind yourself. If the king had respected the aetherial forces, had not tried to meddle in things beyond his reach, he wouldn’t have found trouble for himself in the first place. 

“Oh,” you say, at a loss for words. 

“He’s unraveling already,” the demon says with a smile that isn’t directed at you at all. “And once he knows that I’ve captured his pretty little bride, I’m sure that will tip him over the edge.”

Rage curdles in your stomach, and to your surprise it is not directed at the demon. The king—the bloodthirsty, cruel,  _ foolish _ king knew that he warred with a demon and still brought you into his fold? It is pure luck that the demon isn’t interested in maiming you, you think as your lips curl back in anger. You want him gone. You want him to pay for his crimes and savagery under your heel, to know that it was you. 

“I want to help,” you say quickly. “He is a blight on the land. The sooner he is gone, the better for us all.” There is no further explanation needed; your goals matter little to the demon, after all.

The demon appraises you carefully as you step closer still, holding out your hand in the way you’ve seen the lords so before they strike deals. Curtsying is shy and demure, nothing like the vengeance boiling under your skin. 

“Perhaps the king is not quite so foolish,” the demon says, smiling wider now as he reaches out for your hand. “For a human, you are a rare treat.” You grit your teeth at his words but shake his hand with all of the steel that you own. As soon as his fingers wrap around your hand, fingertips settling down by the pulse point at your wrist, you feel his magic sear across your skin.

“Just a little seal,” he says easily, watching discomfort flit across your face. “To mark our agreement. Not that I think you’d truly be able to work against me, but consider it… Insurance. For us both.”

Fine. He doesn’t trust you; you tell yourself that it’s fair because you don’t really trust him all that much, either. And if his little magic trick keeps him from harming you as much as it keeps you from harming him, then all the better. 

“Where do we start? What may I address you as?” It’s tiring referring to him as demon endlessly, and it isn’t as if you need the reminder of what he is. The horns and tail do that well enough. 

“Belphegor,” he says as if he’s barely considering your words. “And he has a troublesome court magician; his defenses are surprisingly strong. I’ve only been able to send a few sweet dreams his way, but there is  _ much _ more to be done. You wouldn’t happen to have anything on you of his, would you?”

You do, actually, and you would have thought he’d learned that while he was posing as a messenger. Instead of answering him with words, you twist off the signet ring around your finger and drop it into the hand he extends. He hums something that might be a thanks and curls his fingers around it. You don’t even flinch when it bursts into green flames in his hand. 

“Let’s get to work, shall we?”

* * *

‘Work’ turns out to be you picking away at the king’s dreams while Belphegor slept. He wakes only occasionally to offer suggestions or to check your progress, but he seems happy enough to leave you to your own devices. The tapestry of horror your weave for the man’s sleeping moments are plucked from your own nightmares, the ones that always came to visit you after you heard of a new battle or a new slaughter. 

Belphegor shows you with glee how your work is taking its toll; the king looks exhausted and aged far beyond his years. His ability to strategize falters, and for the first time you can remember, he takes a significant loss. Neither you nor Belphegor ease back in your endeavors, determined to bring the king to his knees. The ring that you handed over to Belphegor serves as a link that even the king’s magician cannot break, and it allows you unfettered access to the king’s deepest fears.

They’re laughable things, for a man of his stature. He does not fear for his people, of what might happen to them should all of the people he has wronged gather to take action. No; in his heart of hearts he is afraid of losing what he has, of power slipping from between his fingers. It is perhaps what led him to try and subjugate a demon. Too bad for him and all of the realms, then, that the otherworldly forces were more powerful than even his ego. 

“He is close to slipping,” Belphegor says when he wakes from another deep sleep. It always takes his eyes a moment to adjust to the bright, green flames that you’ve made your place beside. He comes to sit next to you and stares into the flames as if he can see through them into the tapestry of terror you’ve woven for your mutual enemy. 

“Good,” you say. It’s difficult to say how many days you’ve spent with the demon with no sun in the sky, but you suspect that your stay in his realm might have lasted months. The king is no longer so well-kept when you are able to spy on him in his dreams and from his eyes you can see that he has retreated from the front to hide in his chambers. The stone walls cannot protect him any better than his magician can, now, and if you were foolish you might have pitied him. 

But you are sure in your convictions; the king must be excised, ruined entirely lest he try to claw his way back from the wreckage he’s earned. 

Belphegor surprises you but holding a hand out to you, seeming almost like the prince you first mistook him for when he pulled you into his realm. You slip your hand into his and lace your fingers between his own, dragging your gaze up to meet his.

“Would you like to join me?” He asks, tightening his hold on your hand so you can feel his warmth. You know what he means: do you wish to be the last coffin nail?

“Yes,” you say, standing with him. It’s no longer the uneasy alliance it was at the start. For all of your differences, you find yourself thinking of him almost as a friend—a strange one, no doubt, but a friend nonetheless. Except your friendship isn’t anything like what you shared with your ladies-in-waiting, the daughters of the nobles mostly vying for favor. Your status came first, what you could do for them second, and who you actually are as a person some distant third. 

Not so with Belphegor. It’s refreshing to know that he could not possibly care less if you were born to a queen or a milkmaid, that he would treat you the same regardless. And he is kind—kinder than you expected a demon to be certainly. 

So in the rare moments you allow yourself to analyze whatever feelings you may or may not have for your demon friend you think that they might, maybe, be verging on something else. You fancied yourself in love with a knight, once, some second son of a very minor lord who had to claw his way up in the ranks. He was kind and gentle and you even gave him a favor, once when he was in a feastday competition. You allowed him to fan the flames of your affections with lingering glances and quiet smiles, but nothing else could bloom between you two. The pedestal you were kept on meant that you were always too far out of reach, too coddled and condescended to be allowed to explore any experience whatsoever. 

Maybe, though—maybe you like this demon more than you ever liked the knight. Belphegor doesn’t treat you like glass, is no stranger to rubbing a mistake in your face or telling you when your paltry magic is subpar. And he doesn’t hold his hands back as if he might invoke the wrath of the gods if he were to consider touching you. 

Yes, you think as he holds your hand in his. You might even love him, a little bit. The thought is terrifying and you close your eyes so he cannot see your fear as he spirits you away and back into the realm you called home for most of your life. It is not fear of him, not in the traditional sense; instead of fearing that he might tear you limb from limb as you had been taught since you were a babe in the cradle, you instead worry that if you were to confess to him, he would laugh at you. After all, you are but a paltry human. Machinations aside, the magic you have started learning is not and never will be as strong as his, and the offhanded comments he’s dropped makes it clear to you that is something very important to him. 

When you open your eyes next, you are in a familiar bedchamber. One that, had you been allowed to continue on your path, you might have seen much more frequently. Now you only know it by your travels through the king’s nightly terrors. 

In the end, you don’t have to do much at all—which, you’ve learned, is Belphegor’s favorite way of doing things. You appear before the king as he is trying to drift off to sleep, resplendent in your shared glory and wreathed in Belphegor’s living shadows. 

“Hello,” you say pleasantly, sure that the king recognizes you by the way his eyes bulge from his head. But most of his attention is taken up by the demon in his presence. 

“You,” the king groans out, his voice weak. It would have been kinder to finish him off, to not let Belphegor play with him like a cat with a mouse. But he is also the architect of so much suffering throughout the realms, is the reason you yourself have been shuffled around for so long that it is difficult to dredge up any pity at all. 

“Having sweet dreams, I hope,” Belphegor says as he leans closer. You know he’s taken some sort of pleasure out of drawing the dream torture out, of draining the man’s life and sanity night after night. The king pales at the demon’s words and you side up behind Belphegor, watching the two of you carefully. 

“Your payment has come due, human.” Belphegor clasps your hand tighter and raises it to his lips, his eyes narrowing as he watches the king’s reaction. It should be the thing foremost on your mind, but most of your attention is taken up by the split-second touch of his lips against the back of your hand. 

You watch as the king’s face goes ashen and he grabs his left arm, mouthing words that will not come. In all of your life, you have never seen someone die. Death is not a stranger to your life—how can it be, with so many wars?—but it has never happened in front of you before. You thought you were prepared, thought that maybe Belphegor might make some further speech to explain his actions. But you were mistaken and although you know that it means the realm can start to heal, that the fallen kingdoms can reclaim independence… You’re not prepared for the finality. It’s surely not the ending the king hoped for. It’s not an ending  _ anyone _ hopes for, to have your own heart fail you while a demon watches.

And that is… It. You find yourself staring, eyes wide, until Belphegor grabs you by the shoulders and turns you around.

“I didn’t think you’d actually  _ watch, _ ” he says, his words chastising but with no real sting behind them. You shake your head but do not fight to turn around to look at the dead king again.

“I felt like I had to witness,” you explain with a frown. If you were going to be involved in a death then you felt you owed it to the victim to stand as attestant to the aftermath. “Why did you bring me here?” 

Magic settles around you and he smiles at your challenge, but then he frowns. You don’t see the thoughtful expression that crosses his face or the way his mouth tightens. 

“I can’t say,” he finally says, releasing you once you’re back under his starry sky. You want to ask him if he actually cannot say or that he will not say, but you don’t want to press him, not when you’re feeling so delicate.

Time passes, and you allow it to without fighting for it to slow down. You imagine that it’s a fortnight, at least, and Belphegor accedes to your request when you ask to see how your family is doing. You stare into the wide silver mirror that he uses to divine the world outside of his home and see that they are doing well. They are  _ happy. _ In the peace that the graceless death of the king brought, your brother has married. None of them, you notice with a sigh, seem to wonder what happened to their missing daughter or sister. If your disappearance was noticed at all, you can find no sign of it. 

That is the night you curl into the pile of pillows with Belphegor, pressing yourself against his back as you throw an arm over his chest. He doesn’t protest, but also doesn’t immediately give you a sign that he approves of your touch. Perhaps he is asleep. He does that often, sometimes succumbing in the middle of a conversation or sleeping an entire day away. You like watching him sleep because it’s when he looks the most serene—and without the king to offer a diversion, there isn’t much else for you to do.

But he surprises you when he sighs heavily and turns under your arm, reaching out for your face. He slides his thumbs over your cheekbones as if he can’t see you in the dark the same way you can’t see him. You reach out and your hand brushes against one of his horns, tracing its twisting shape until the very tip of it pricks your fingers. He leans forward and you can feel his lips curl into a smile against your forehead. 

“Just what are you starting?”

You feel heat flush your face because you hadn’t meant to  _ start _ anything at all. Instead of answering you bring your hand from his horn back down to his face; when his tail wraps around your wrist you don’t even jump. 

“You can go back, you know. My fun meddling with your realm is over.”  _ For now _ are the words he doesn’t say, the words that you hear loud enough to make your lips twitch into a smile. He’s a demon; they’re always interfering with human affairs. Some of the stars burn just a little brighter, giving you just enough light to make out the silhouette of his features. He watches you openly, but face cloaked in a cautious mien, like he’s waiting for you to get up and run away at any moment. 

Do you want to go back? Go back and… do  _ what, _ exactly? Allow yourself to be auctioned off to the next highest bidder? To live as a demure little mouse who knows she should not raise her head to meet her lord’s eye? To live quiet and afraid after you’ve brought down a kingdom? The idea makes you feel sick.

“Are you going to leave me? With just this final memory of you to keep me company?” His hands slide from your face, down your neck, and then across your shoulders. “Do you want to stay?”

There have been precious few times in your life that someone has asked you what you  _ wanted, _ to effect any sort of meaningful change over your own life. The option of marriage was taken from you, as were your suitors. You didn’t even get to select your own wardrobe for the day more often than not. 

“I…” You breathe out hard through your nose as if the option of choice is nigh overwhelming. Tears prick at the corners of your eyes and you realize with a wet laugh that they’re happy tears. But he’s still waiting for an answer.

“Because if you’re  _ planning _ on leaving me with this memory, then you should know that I will have to do the same to you.” He rolls over so that you are trapped beneath him in the cage created by his arms. “This has not been nearly long enough,” Belphegor breathes out, his breath fanning across your face so close you swear you can feel the heat from his lips. “I want to be closer to you and to know you more intimately than anyone else ever has. Or will.”

A shudder rolls through you at the promise held within his words. Of course you’re not going back; why would you?

You reach up and twine your arms around his neck, closing the few inches between you both. 

“I want to stay,” you say, and it’s as good as a promise when you kiss him in the dark.


End file.
